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Literary Cryptograms and the Cretan Academies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Rosemary E. Bancroft-Marcus
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Extract

Recent researches into the history of the Cretan Academies have added a new dimension to our understanding of the extraordinary flowering of scholarship and literature termed the Cretan Renaissance. We now know that the small island of Crete, dominated for so many centuries by Venetian overlords, had developed by 1560–1632 a resident intelligenzia capable of furnishing three Academies: the Vivi of Rethymno, founded in January 1562 by Francesco Barozzi; the Stravaganti of Irakleio, founded in 1591 by Andrea Cornaro; and the Sterili of Chania, granted a meeting-hall in August 1632 and additional protection by a decree of December 1637.

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 8 , 1983 , pp. 47 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1983

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References

1. N. M. Panagiotakis, (a) oi Stravaganti V (May-Aug. 1966), 39–53; (b) ‘O Francesco Barozzi Kai ή Vivi 3 ov II (Athens 1974), 232–251 [= PANAG.]; (c) with A. L. Vincent, ’ Stravaganti, VII (1970), 52–81 [= NEA]; (d) with A. L. Vincent, VIII (1971), 87–94.

2. See PANAG. This study develops ideas first expressed in my D.Phil, thesis, Georgios Chortatsis, 16th-century Cretan playwright: a critical study, submitted to Oxford University in Trinity Term, 1978 [= THESIS], esp. Chs. 1.4 & 5 and V.2 & 3.

3. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome 1960) [= DIZ. BIOG.], vol. VI, pp. 495–9; and P. L. Rose, ‘A Venetian patron and mathematician of the 16th century: Francesco Barozzi (1537–1604)’, Studi Veneziani, I (1977), 119–178 [= ROSE].

4. See n. 1 (a, c, d). Also Maylender, M., Storia delle Accademie d’Italia (Bologna 1926–30), 5 volsGoogle Scholar. [= MAYL.], where entries are arranged alphabetically under Academy title.

5. MAYL.

6. NEA p. 73.

7. NEA pp. 78 and 76.

8. Seven anonymous Stravaganti ‘imprese’ are illustrated in the complimentary pamphlet presented to the departing Venetian official Giacomo Zane, Oratione di Andrea Cornaro… London BM Addit. 8637 [= ZANE], 2r-8r. They are: (i) a woman with cross in one hand, cup in the other (motto ‘Ante oculos semper’); (ii) dividers (‘Omnia in mensura’); (iii) a pendulum-like instrument (‘Neque ad dextram, neque ad sinistram’); (iv) a map of ‘Candia, Cerigo, Tine’ overlooked by an eye (‘Speculator ab alto’); (v) a lute (‘Nil inconcinne’); (vi) a pelican tearing open its breast (‘Non quae sibi, sed quae aliis utilia’); (vii) a blazing sun with human face (‘Nunquam occidet’).

9. THESIS, Ch. 1.4, and n. 1(a), pp. 62–63.

10. Notably N. M. Panagiotakis, A. L. Vincent and S. Alexiou. See Alexiou’s article Mandatoforos, XIII (June 1979), 4–11.

11. NEA 75.

12. ZANE 22v. Cf. Basile’s ‘fama canora’ (NEA 76).

13. This topic will be more fully explored in an article now under composition.

14. PANAG.

15. For this dating of Chortatsis’ plays Erofili and Panoria, see THESIS, Ch. 1.3. For a brief statement of this and other topics in THESIS, see ‘Georgios Chortatsis and his works: a critical review’, Mandatoforos, XVI (July 1980), 13–46. Editions of Chortatsis’ plays are also discussed there.

16. PANAG. 242 n. 28. The connection of these debates with the Vivi is my own idea.

17. See NEA, 70–71 for a possible covert allusion, in classical disguise, by Marco Condarato. The phrase ‘naturae misteria, profunda obducta caligine atque penitus obvelata’ has an air of mysticism which seems odd in the context of Aristotle’s Lyceum; Nature was considered the mother of magic.

18. They were exchanging sonnets as early as 1576 (when Cornare complimented Barozzi on his prediction of a comet). In 1596 they witnessed a financial transaction also involving an agent or ‘commesso’ called Georgios Chortatsis. On this, see S. A. Evangelatos, (ci. 1545–1610), VII (1970), 182–227; and THESIS Ch. I.2.

19. The Italian version of Barozzi’s Cosmographia Ptolemaica (first published in Latin in Venice, 1585) was not granted its printing licence until 1605, a year after his death. It contains encomiastic verse by Daniel Fourlanos.

20. Clubb, L. G., G. B. Delia Porta (Princeton, 1965)Google Scholar [= CLUBB].

21. See Pernot, H., P. Gentil de Vendosme et Antoine Achelis, Le Siege de Malte par lex Turcs en 1565 (Paris, 1910)Google Scholar, for Achelis’ dedication of his Cretan poem to Barozzi.

22. Barozzi’s collection of correspondence, Paris MS Lat. 7218 [= CORR.], f. 26r, includes a letter to Vergitzis (author of a history of Crete), acknowledging receipt of a sonnet beginning ‘Con gli occhi d’ Argo, a ogni celeste mente’ (7 March 1577).

23. See n. 19. Fourlanos’ first quatrain reads: ‘Dum tu orbem ingenio totum metiris, et arte/Et lustras magni sydera cuneta poli;/Aethera per liquidum, vacuique per aeris oras,/et potis es summi templa adiisse Jovis’.

24. Margounios, a scholar-priest, wrote a preface for a reprint of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica, a work popular among Italian academicians. See n. 1(a) above, p. 51, n. 9; and H. O. Coxe, Greek MSS (Bodleian Library Quarto Catalogues I) (Oxford, 1969; repr. of 1853 ed.) [= COXE] for two notes indicating that Maximos Margounios and Francesco Barozzi lent each other books (Cod. Barocius 212/3 and 92, the latter dated March 1577).

25. Lombardo shared Barozzi’s interest in natural magic. His book De Natura (Padua, 1589) is dedicated to Giacomo Foscarini, like Barozzi’s edition of Leo Sapiens. See NEA, 63 for his odd reference to the goddess Nature in Crete.

26. A manuscript of Calergi’s, Argumenta Symposiacorum Plutarchi, is among Barozzi’s Greek manuscripts in the Bodleian, Oxford. See COXE, Cod. Barocius 117, f. 221v. On Matteo Calergi, see N. M. Panagiotakis, V (1968), 45–118.

27. DIZ. BIOG. VI, 495–9.

28. On the Italian Academies, see MAYL. The Accademia Veneziana planned to publish Barozzi’s edition of Proclus (see ROSE, p. 126, n. 23).

29. See CLUBB and MAYL.

30. See the British Museum catalogue for his supposed works.

31. On alchemy, a most useful book is E. J. Holmyard, Alchemy (a Pelican Original, first published 1957; reprinted 1968).

32. On hermetic diction and symbolism, see Pernety, Dom A.-J., Dictionnaire Mytho-Hermetique (Paris, 1758)Google Scholar; and de Broglie, J.-A., Le Sablier d’Or (Flammarion [France], 1971).Google Scholar

33. Della Porta wrote a much-used manual on cryptography.

34. See U.T.E.T. ed. of Tasso’s works, vol. 2, pp. 190–2, for the innuendos of Aminta A1 272–322.

35. The technique of cryptography was known in contemporary Cyprus. For a Cypriot verse concealing the name Stamatios Donato, see Siapkaras-Pitsillides, T., Le Petrarchisme en Chypre: Poèmes d’Amour (Athens, 1975), pp. 21–23 Google Scholar. In Barozzi’s Commentarius in locum Platonis obscurissimum… (Bologna, 1566), there is an encomium by ‘Alexander Syngliticus Cyprius’ with an anagram on the poet’s name (Alex. Sinclytiquus): Laudes inde tuas series aeterna nepotum/Extollet Caelo, clari simul inclyta textent,/Usque Geometrae tua scitis dogmata formis/Axe suos dum vasta Polos premet orbita Mundi’.

36. Katz. A2S5 & 6 (= Act Two Scenes Five and Six), A4S6–8, A5S9–12; Stath. A2S3 (esp. ll. 99–120 on ‘astrologia’), A2S7, A3S2 & 3; Fort. A1S3, A3S3, A4S2, A5S4.

37. CORR. 16r-16v and 26v-28r.

38. World of Words (1598 ed.).

39. See n. 32, Le Sablier d’ Or, pp. 15–24. The tree of life appears in Erof. A1 343–7.

40. These images are found in Erof. Chorus IV.

41. Mainero’s speech is summarised in PANAG. 233–7 and 242–3. The order of the speeches is reversed in Mainero’s MS, but it is clear from his phrase ‘con quanti belle sententie… ci ha esortati’ that Barozzi spoke first.

42. PANAG. 234, n. 4. This site should be preserved for posterity, along with the ruins of other Venetian villas in the Cretan countryside. Cornaro may have been thinking of Barozzi’s fountain when he said (ZANE 16r-v) ‘Fò come colui che cerca d’ arrichire i vivi fonti d’ acque, e di coralli e perle il mare’.

43. Pashley, R., Travels in Crete, 2 vols. (London, 1837; reprinted Amsterdam, 1970), I, ch. 6, pp. 96–7.Google Scholar

44. Barozzi’s speech is summarised in PANAG. 244–250, which is the source of my quotations and paraphrases in this section.

45. G. B. Basile refers to the ‘Ciel de Creta’ (NEA 75).

46. For classical views on Crete see Aristotle’s Politics, Book II, Ch. 9, and Morrow, G. R., Plato’s Cretan City: a historical interpretation of the Laws (Princeton, 1960)Google Scholar. Barozzi may have intended the Vivi to be such a community, and an example to be followed by other Cretan cities.

47. Cf. Katz. A5 287–8, ‘O fulminantes Jupiter, o Giove, o Saturno,/o Diana boscareccia, Apolline, Nettuno…’ All but Neptune were planets as well as gods; the planet Neptune had yet to be discovered.

48. A. Cornaro uses this phrase to describe virtue; it is a star which never sets, and an ‘eterna primavera, ch’ imparadisa gli huomini in terra, e li fa vivere felici e beati’. Francesco di Mezo’s poem concludes similarly, probably in imitation of Cornaro’s speech: ‘Come ‘l tuo nome qui, Zane, fra noi/Vivra sempre immortal, sempre felice’. (ZANE 10v-11r and 22r).

49. Perhaps Domenico Bembo (who became Rettor di Rettimo in 1577) or Benedetto Bembo (who was Rettor in 1585).

50. Spiritual ‘water’ to nourish the soul, and perhaps ‘fruit’ as a symbol of its immortal works.

51. Cf. the encomium by Annibal Lazzarinus in Barozzi’s Commentarius… (see n. 34) which alludes to Barozzi’s quest for immortality: ‘At tu qui eximia praestas virtute, Baroci,/Nil mortale sonans, mystica sensa doces;/Oedipoda maior, Sphingen namque ille voracem/Delusit, Mortem tu ingenio superas’.

52. Book I, Ch. 2, f. 61.

53. This schema may have been absorbed by the Stravaganti. When complimenting G. B. Basile on his Pianto della Vergine, A. Cornaro wrote: ‘A’ tuoi soavi accenti/Fanno dolce tenor gli Angiol’ beati,/E i Cieli e gli Elementi/Stanno ’l tuo canto a udir taciti e intenti’ (NEA 74).

54. A. Cornaro is addressed by Basile (NEA 76) as the Sun-god Apollo: ‘Nuovo Apollo splendente/Illustra il gran Cornar l’ invitto choro./Rallegra l’ Oriente,/Togliendo da l’ oblio l’ età de l’ oro’. Here the East probably stands for East Crete and the ‘golden age’ for Crete’s past glory, resuscitated by the Stravaganti.

55. Book II, Ch. 1, f. 87v-88r. In ZANE 12v, A. Cornaro employs the Zodiac as an image of the ‘cursus honorum’: ‘Havendo trascorso in quel terzeno cielo gran parte del Zodiaco de gli honori, entraste finalmente nel magistrato gravissimo dell’ Avogadore, quasi al segno della Libra, che con giusta lance pesa e misura le humane attioni…’.

56. In a special sense, ‘man’ and ‘animal’ may be synonymous (see Aristotle’s Categoriae, opening paragraphs). According to Albertus, Frater, Alchemist’s Handbook (New York, 1974), pp. 48–52 Google Scholar, ‘Libra’ has a variant ‘Simia’ (Ape).

57. PANAG. 243.

58. CORR. 25v. The word ‘precipitoso’ may be a pun on ‘Prencipe reinforced by ‘prosontione’.

59. See UTET of Tasso, pp. 71 and 105, for poems containing puns on Laura and Tasso.

60. A piece of dialogue in Olimpia (quoted in CLUBB) contains three anagrams on ‘Della Porta’: Dimmi, Mastica, dove me porti Olimpia? — Se non la porta dentro quel suo tumido ventre, ignoriamo dove la porti. — Questo ventre è che te la porta.

61. Piccolomini’s comedy Alessandro is named after himself. In a scene of Amor Costante (A4S1), a character exclaims: ‘Venga il cancaro alla Natura, che ha ordinato agli huomini sì picciol corparello!’

62. Puns on names of this type were common in Italian family crests.

63. CORR. 26v-28r.

64. See n. 18.

65. THESIS, Ch. I.3.

66. Published in ROSE as an appendix.

67. MAYL., s.v. Infiammati.

68. Chortatsis’ Erofili and Panoria seem to have been written and added to over a long period of time, perhaps involving several performances and revision for possible publication. Foscarini’s copy of Erofili provides important evidence that the Choruses and Interludes were not always attached to the play in the positions they occupy in modern editions; they may have been composed separately.